Opera

• Strauss - Daphne | DVD | (04/12/2006) from £25.79   |  Saving you £-5.80 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Performance of Richard Strauss' opera Daphne.

• Previn: A Streetcar Named Desire | DVD | (28/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  André Previn's first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire, is an intelligent adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play, written to be performed by two very strong principals. Renée Fleming's performance as Blanche Dubois is one of the best things she has done, full of a dangerous bravado and a vulnerability that wins us despite our irritation. The role is one which gives her voice ample opportunity both for extended displays of controlled, passionate singing and for those moments when singing by itself is enough and the voice has to break off in sorrow or madness. Rodney Gilfrey as Stanley Kowalski is equally fine--his voice has the right dangerous energy. In the important subsidiary roles of Stella and Mitch, Elizabeth Futral and Anthony Dean Griffey are also remarkable. Futral in particular gives a total performance in which we forget to make a distinction between her acting and her singing. The opera itself is, as you would expect, one of the most accessible new scores to arrive on the opera stage for some years, drawing heavily on the legacy of jazz and with that nervous musical intensity we associate with the play. Previn conducts the San Francisco Opera Orchestra effectively. A complete CD recording with the same cast is also available.On the DVD: The DVD comes with menus in English, French, German and Spanish and sub-titles in French and German. It is presented in 4:3 ratio and with PCM stereo sound. The booklet gives a moderately interesting account of the opera's genesis. --Roz Kaveney

• Meyerbeer: L'Africaine | DVD | (03/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Enormously popular and influential in its time, Meyerbeer's L'Africaine has become a rarity--the conventions of grand opera which it embodies so thoroughly are only familiar as adapted by Verdi and Wagner, so this work usefully reminds us of how radical they were. Meyerbeer and his librettist Scribe give us a five-act plot full of confrontations and threats of death, a shipwreck and the suicide of the Indian heroine Selika and her rejected suitor by inhaling the poisonous aromas of a deadly tree. The expedition of Vasco Da Gama round the Cape of Good Hope and up to the spice ports of India becomes less a story about the crusade for profit and more a matter of messy triangular love affairs. Heavy fathers, Brahmin priests and Grand Inquisitors are handled with much facility and no intensity. What L'Africaine really amounts to is a singers' display piece, and the two principals here--Shirley Verrett as Selika and Placido Domingo as Vasco--are entirely up to its demands. Domingo reminds us that Vasco's Act 4 aria "Oh Paradis" was for decades a standard tenor showstopper. The other principals, Ruth Ann Svenson and Justino Diaz, are entirely admirable and Marco Arena and the San Francisco Opera give the work as a whole both the grandeur it certainly possesses and rather more subtlety than one might have expected. On the DVD: The DVD, presented in 4:3 ratio, and in PCM stereo, has no features apart from instructions and subtitles in French, German, English and Spanish. This failure to provide extras, or even an especially informative leaflet, becomes especially regrettable with a work whose conventions are now far out of the operatic mainstream. --Roz Kaveney

• Die Zauberflote - Mozart | DVD | (29/05/2006) from £24.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Mozart: Die Zauberflote (Ostman)

• Mozart: Don Giovanni -- Glyndebourne | DVD | (21/08/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Deborah Warner's 1995 production of Don Giovanni for Glyndebourne is characterised by a central portrayal of the Don as at once evil and sexually magnetic. Gilles Cachemille has at one at the same time a raffish charm and a deep mean-spiritedness--many Don Giovannis don't bully his servant nearly as much as this one, and Warner pushes his sinfulness all the way into sacrilege--apart from mocking the Commendatore's grave effigy, this Giovanni also has his way with a statue of the Madonna. Pieczonka's Elvira is at once stately and sensual--there is no sense of hysteria here, rather more of a deep sadness and sense of a ruined life. Page's Leporello is a wonderful long-faced clown; his catalogue aria is at once genuinely funny and a rather sadistic tease of Elvira. Though Kreizberg is working with authentic forces, the feel of his performance has a passionate gloominess that teeters on the brink of Romanticism without ever exceeding the work's adventurousness. The DVD comes with subtitles in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, as well as a full printable text of the libretto. --Roz Kaveney

• Britten: The Turn of the Screw -- Schwetzinger Festival 1990 | DVD | (25/05/2001) from £24.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Michael Hampe's celebrated production of Benjamin Britten's shattering opera based on the spine-chilling short story by the 19th century American novelist Henry James. The Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart performs under the renowned Britten specialist Stuart Bedford.

• Luciano Pavarotti - Verdi - Un Ballo In Machera | DVD | (26/02/2008) from £25.95   |  Saving you £-3.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £21.99

  Giuseppe Verdi - Un Ballo In Maschera.Live At The Metropolitan Opera on 16 February 1980.

• Donizetti - La Fille Du Regiment (Bonynge) | DVD | (27/08/2007) from £16.18   |  Saving you £-1.19 (-7.90%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Gaetano Donizetti: La Fille Du Regiment

• Mister Johnson | DVD | (05/06/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  In 1923 British Colonial Nigeria, Mister Johnson (Maynard Eziashi) is an oddity -- an educated black man who doesn't really fit in with either the natives or the British boss s. He is secretary to the local British magistrate (Pierce Brosnan) and considers himself an English Gentleman, though he has never been to England. He is always scheming and plotting, trying to get ahead, which lands him in a lot of hot water with both his own people and his Colonial Masters. This tragically moving drama is brought to life by Maynard Eziashi s excellent performance as Mister Johnson and Pierce Brosnan strong portrayal of the typical British Colonial Official whose mission to build a road takes over both of their lives.

• Paradise Lost - The Anatomy Of Melancholy | DVD | (26/05/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  On April 12th 2007 UK Gothic Metal pioneers PARADISE LOST played a sold-out show at the Koko club in the heart of Camden London to record a DVD. Fans and media from all over the world swarmed the beautiful Baroque style venue initially opened in 1900 as ""The Camden Theatre"" to celebrate a band that 20 years since they began in 1988 is still one of the most exciting bands of their self-defined genre. Disc One: 1. Intro 2. The Enemy (from the album In Requiem 2007) 3. Grey (from the album Paradise Lost 2005) 4. Erased (from the album Symbol Of Life 2002) 5. Red Shift (from the album Paradise Lost 2005) 6. So Much is Lost (from the album Host 2005) 7. Sweetness (from the single Seals the Sense 1994) 8. Praise Lamented Shade (from the album In Requiem 2007) 9. Pity The Sadness (from the album Shades Of God 1992) 10. Forever Failure (from the album Draconian Times 1995) 11. Once Solemn (from the album Draconian Times 1995) 12. As I Die (from the album Shades Of God 1992) 13. Embers Fire (from the album Icon 1993) 14. Mouth (from the album Believe In Nothing 2001) 15. No Celebration (from the album Symbol Of Life 2002) 16. Eternal (from the album Gothic 1991) 17. True Belief (from the album Icon 1993) 18. One Second (from the album One Second 1997) 19. The Last Time (from the album Draconian Times 1995) 20. Gothic (from the album Gothic 1991) 21. Say Just Words (from the album One Second 1997) Disc 2: 1. Interview with Paradise Lost (14:27) 2. Fans at Koko (8:48) 3. Lost In Europe (2007 tour report) (27:30) Promo video clips: 1. The Enemy (3:39) 2. Praise Lamented Shade (4:05) 3. Over The Madness - documentary trailer (1:31)

• The Reichsorchester - the Berlin Philharmonic | DVD | (28/01/2008) from £39.77   |  Saving you £-19.78 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  From the years 1933 to 1945, financed by the German Reich and answerable directly to the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, the Berlin Philharmonic was not only Germany's flagship orchestra; it also became an ambassador for the National Socialist regime, particularly on foreign tours.First-hand accounts delivered by contemporary witnesses, as well as a wealth of previously unevaluated archive material, provide a highly authentic glimpse into the period under the swastika.

• Conspiracy Theories | DVD | (25/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Uncovering some of history's most intriguing mysteries

• Luciano Pavarotti - Pavarotti In Concert - Modena | DVD | (19/11/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  A rare and intimate evening with Pavarotti live in Modena.

• La Scala Di Seta - Rossini | DVD | (03/03/2006) from £14.75   |  Saving you £10.24 (69.42%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Gioacchino Rossini's La scala di setaA stage production of the Oper der Stadt Koln and the Opera de Montpellier from the Schwetzinger Festspiele.Recorded live at the Rokokotheater Schwetzingen 6-8 May 1990.

• Families: 5 True Stories | DVD | (03/09/2007) from £17.53   |  Saving you £2.46 (12.30%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Contains the following films:- Switching Parents.- Stranger In The Family.- Going Underground.- The People Next Door.- Deep In My Heart.

• Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots | DVD | (26/01/2001) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  As grand opera goes, few examples of the form have the inherent grandeur of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. The dramatic backdrop is Mérimée's account of the 16th-century St Bartholomew's Day Massacre of thousands of French Calvinists under the Catholic regime. The trick, insofar as there is one, is the way in which the attendant upheaval is reflected in the smallest detail of the lives of the main protagonists. This Berlin Opera production of 1991 carries this process several stages further, embedding--and there really is no other word to describe the thoroughness of the process--the narrative into an indeterminate, hyper-condensed 20th-century setting. While this approach has its own pitfalls, such as the silent "pre-overture" which proposes an unsubtle comparison between the oppression of the Catholics and the persecution of the Jews in wartime Germany, it would be churlish to let them detract from what is a robust and highly memorable performance of this sometimes unfashionable opera. The usual trailer for other Arthaus DVDs is appended. --Roger Thomas

• Don Giovanni - Mozart | DVD | (30/01/2006) from £25.59   |  Saving you £4.40 (17.19%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Calixto Bieto's famously controversial 2002 production of Mozart's great opera sets the action in the late twentieth century and brings to life an ancient story brilliantly retold. Bertrand de Billy conducts an energetic cast by Wojtek Drabowicz in the title role with the Liceu's Orchestra Academy.

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni | DVD | (28/08/2006) from £19.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (50.03%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Lluis Pasqual's powerful new production for the Spanish capital sets Da Ponte's timeless story of sleaze and seduction into the dark world of 1940s Spain. Carlos Alvarez, in the title role, toys with the affections of Donna Anna, Zerlina and the Spanish lady Donna Elvira, before his overpowering methods finally bring his own destruction. Filmed with high definition cameras and true surround sound.

• Rossini - Maometto Secondo | DVD | (14/11/2005) from £27.29   |  Saving you £-2.30 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Rossini - Maometto Secondo

• Mountain Of The Cannibal God | DVD | (25/08/2008) from £16.18   |  Saving you £-3.19 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Mountain Of The Cannibal God